


in an orbit all the way around you

by DasWarSchonKaputt



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Celebrity, Danny is a publicist, Danny is not paid enough for this shit, Derek won an Oscar, Happy Ending, I promise, Kira owns a fashion magazine, Lydia is a popstar, M/M, Scott and Stiles totally used to be Disney stars, and would like to reiterate that he is not paid enough for this shit, these tags are a mess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-23
Updated: 2014-08-23
Packaged: 2018-02-14 10:19:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2188068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DasWarSchonKaputt/pseuds/DasWarSchonKaputt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They’ve won Cutest Celebrity Couple at the Teen Choice Awards for three years running now, and there’s a part of Stiles that tells him it might be time to step aside and give some of the others a chance.</p><p>But, as Danny told him the first time he and Derek were nominated, it’s fantastic publicity, and Stiles will never be able to forget the way Derek <i>looked</i> at him with his soul-splitting eyes, like Stiles was worth something more than his face or his voice, when Stiles reached over their trophy and kissed him. Just kissed him, careless and happy, in front of the cameras, the crew, the guests, award pressed between them awkwardly and digging into Stiles’ ribs.</p><p>A famous AU, with the McCall Pack as various celebrities.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in an orbit all the way around you

**Author's Note:**

> Based on [derek-henley's tumblr post](http://dereks-henley.tumblr.com/post/92377051930/teen-wolf-social-media-mccall-pack-as) which is just amazing and this person deserves all the awards.
> 
> Stiles isn't in a good place at various points in this fic. There's nothing graphic, but there is a description of a panic attack that is mostly based on my own experiences of one. If in doubt, message me, and I'll be happy to discuss possible triggers and whatnot. I really do not want to trigger anyone with my writing.
> 
> A special shoutout to somecoughsyruptoeasethepain (on tumblr, but she's JustineDarling over here on AO3) who is just pretty damn rad and read this over for me.
> 
> Oh and the title is from Lena's song Satellite (from the eurovision song contest) because it's an awesome song

**then.**

Stiles kisses like he’s in a fist-fight. It’s all sudden moves and caresses that feel more like ambushes, teeth knocking together and hands cupping Derek’s face in a vice grip. It feels like maybe it should mean something. Maybe it does.

But that doesn’t matter.

Because love isn’t supposed to be violent. Shakespeare said something about it once, Derek is sure, and they’re not _in love,_ they’re just…

Making mistakes.

Because that’s all Derek can ever be to Stiles – a mistake.

**now.**

They’ve won Cutest Celebrity Couple at the Teen Choice Awards for three years running now, and there’s a part of Stiles that tells him it might be time to step aside and give some of the others a chance.

But, as Danny told him the first time he and Derek were nominated, it’s fantastic publicity, and Stiles will never be able to forget the way Derek _looked_ at him with his soul-splitting eyes, like Stiles was worth something more than his face or his voice, when Stiles reached over their trophy and kissed him. Just kissed him, careless and happy, in front of the cameras, the crew, the guests, award pressed between them awkwardly and digging into Stiles’ ribs.

And there’s a part of Stiles that can’t let go of that image, and the sudden rush of _why didn’t I do this sooner?_

So when they receive their invites this year – which are embossed and misuse the word _cordially_ in such a manner that has Derek throwing his arms up in the air like it’s a personal affront – Stiles checks _yes_ on the back.

(They win again that year, beating out the leads on MTV’s latest money-making machine, and Stiles whole-heartedly does _not_ stick his tongue out at the runners up, because he’s a mature adult now. The runners up do, however, get caught on camera flipping him and Derek the bird and Stiles spends the rest of the evening cackling, especially when the girl has to get up to take an uncomfortable phone call from her publicist.

When they return from the show, Stiles adds the award to their shelf, thinks how out of place it looks next to Derek’s Academy Award, and then loses interest in anything other than celebrating his win with Derek. _Enthusiastically._ )

**then.**

When he’s not filming – which is most of the time now, since his and Scott’s show got cancelled and Scott deserted Stiles for a new show on the ALPHA network – Stiles spends a lot of his time a dangerous combination of drunk and high. He hates himself under the influence, hates how he can look at Scott and _talk,_ and say the things he swore he’d always swallow back, and watch with some type of abstract _glee_ as his best friend falls apart under the weight of his words. He hates the feeling of not being in control, hates the way his brain just doesn’t work right. He hates it all, but he can’t stop.

He doesn’t know when he starts trading out booze and pills for Derek Hale.

It’s such a bad idea – the worst idea he’s ever had – because he’s not single. He has a girlfriend, always has a girlfriend whenever he’s with Derek, but it just…

Being with Derek is like the anti-high. Because somehow, in amongst their bruising kisses, and rough – hard and grating and _burning_ – sex, Stiles feels in control. Like he could stop Derek, and it wouldn’t change a thing if he did. Because he _could_ stop everything with Derek, and Derek would just pick himself up, put his clothes back on, and leave.

Stiles could stop doing _this_ with Derek Hale.

Maybe that’s why he doesn’t.

**now.**

“So let’s talk about you and Derek,” the host says with a camera-ready smile. Stiles thinks her name is something beginning with T, like Tina, or Trina, or Tracey. It’s probably Tracey.

It’s funny how the question that would have made Stiles freeze up just a year ago only succeeds in bringing a smile to his face now. “Yeah.”

Tracey returns his smile politely. “So, how did you two meet?” she asks.

Stiles can feel crimson creeping into his cheeks. His publicist is going to kill him for telling the real story, but he’s just so done with lying. No more manufactured statements. No more bullshit.

“I mistook him for someone I knew and punched him in the face,” Stiles answers truthfully. It had been one of the most embarrassing moments in Stiles life to date. He thought he was throwing a punch at Lydia’s douchey ex-boyfriend, when in reality he was breaking his hand on Derek Hale’s – then star of the smash hit show, _The Bite_ – stupid, perfect face.

Stiles kind of enjoys watching the talk show host choke on her own spit at that, though. Tracey eventually recovers enough to ask, “And how did you fall in love? Was it instant, like Cupid’s arrow, or are we looking at more of a slow-build?”

“Instant,” Stiles replies immediately. “It was the realising that took the time.”

“That’s…” Tracey trails off. “Really sweet.”

Stiles smiles. “Thank you.”

**then.**

“I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you,” Stiles chants as he sobs. He keeps thumping his balled fists weakly against Derek’s chest, like it’s doing something. “I hate you.”

Derek just clutches him tighter.

As the sobs start to abate, and Stiles’ breathing calms down, Derek presses a kiss to Stiles’ forehead. “I love you,” he says, more forcefully this time, because Stiles needs to hear it. _He_ needs Stiles to hear it.

“I hate you,” Stiles whispers again, but softer, like it’s a secret.

Derek can read between the lines. “I know.”

**now.**

Derek kind of loves watching Stiles sleep. It’s not a creepy thing – not really, despite what Stiles may say to the contrary, lips spread wide in a teasing grin and laughter in his eyes – but…

But when all of this first started, when Stiles was just barely eighteen and still swimming in a pool of drugs and depression and drunkenness, he never stayed long enough to fall asleep. Stiles would always just roll off the bed, and commit himself to a walk of shame that was eight hours too early. Sometimes he’d cast a look back at Derek, one that was a strange mix of tender and disgusted that Derek couldn’t understand.

And still, there are times when Derek looks at Stiles sleeping beside him and wonders how he managed to get the combination of actions and reactions right to eventually get Stiles to stay. Because it wasn’t skill, and it wasn’t luck, because Derek doesn’t have any of that, but somehow, through probability and chance and fate, Stiles _let him in._

Derek caresses Stiles’ sleeping face and decides then and there to never let him go.

**then.**

The first three months after Derek had come out were ugly. Everyone wanted a piece of him – an expression that wasn’t always figurative – and no-one wanted to leave him alone. There were reporters camped outside his home, and people following him on his midnight grocery runs to the store, looking for a boyfriend that wasn’t there.

It was in the second month that Derek got a call from the network, telling him that they were going to phase his character out next season and replace him with some jumped up ex-Disney star that Deaton – the ALPHA network’s exec – has found and fallen into infatuation with.

That ex-Disney star was sixteen year-old Scott McCall, Stiles’ best friend.

Derek doesn’t actually put this together until after his third time sleeping with Stiles, when the younger boy’s phone goes off during foreplay, and he just rolls over and mutters, “Fucking Scott,” with a bitterness that Derek has come to expect when dealing with him. It’s actually the first time that Derek really tries to talk to Stiles about something other than _when_ and _where_ and _how._

It goes about as well as you could expect.

“No,” Stiles says.

Derek raises his eyebrows.

“No,” Stiles repeats. “Just—no. It’s not – I can’t – I’m not going to do that with you, Derek.”

Derek doesn’t know what to say in return to that, because he’s already too deep into the crevice that is Stiles to climb out now, and he won’t push him away. “Okay,” he says.

**now.**

Scott doesn’t like Derek.

He looks at Derek and sees the person that stole his best friend, the co-star he didn’t realise he was stabbing in the back until it was too late, the man who left _The Bite_ – or, _Beyond The Bite,_ as it’s now called, seeing as Deaton thought a bit of rebranding post-Derek would be profitable – and ended up cast in a role that won him an Oscar.

Scott looks at Derek and sees something to resent.

Derek looks at Scott and sees something to look down on.

That just makes it all worse.

**then.**

The nineteenth time Stiles has sex with Derek, he falls asleep afterwards.

He wakes up next to Derek, and meets a pair of warm hazel eyes on him. Derek reaches out to touch his cheek and somehow, Stiles manages not to flinch.

“I love you,” Derek murmurs, like it requires no thought, like it doesn’t rip Stiles apart, like it’s not the cruellest thing he could have said.

The words echo in Stiles’ head, ricocheting around persistently, and he doesn’t realise he’s not breathing until his vision starts to go grey. He gasps open his mouth, suddenly remembering to bring in air, but finds his inhale choked by a sob. He can’t breathe, can’t slow his now thundering heart – throbbing against his eardrums, so _loud_ – can’t stop the tears leaking out of his eyes.

“I hate you,” he chokes out. After he manages a full inhale, it becomes a full-blown chant. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you,” he says it again and again, trying to somehow numb himself against the arms around his middle, and push away from the embrace he doesn’t want.

Derek just holds him tighter.

He doesn’t know how long it take him to calm down, to block out the sound of blood rushing, to level his breathing again, but when he’s back to some semblance of normal, Derek presses a kiss into his hair.

“I love you,” Derek repeats.

The world doesn’t split asunder and Stiles’ brain doesn’t falter. He could _stop_ this. He _could._ “I hate you.”

“I know.”

**now.**

Derek is very pleasantly surprised to find that he likes Kira. He wasn’t expecting much, seeing as she knows Stiles through Scott, but Kira is uniformly charming and near impossible to actively dislike. She runs a fashion magazine, _Foxfire,_ and wants to interview Derek about his latest film project – a romcom called _Dead Silence Should Work Beautifully._ Stiles has been on his ass since _forever_ to do something light-hearted and fun, and they picked out the script together, curled up in his living room, Stiles cackling delightedly whenever he read a particularly funny line.

The scriptwriter is a newbie to all this, some kid named something Parrish, and clearly his sense of humour agrees with Stiles on a spiritual level.

When the introductions are made, and Derek moves to shake Kira’s hand, she stares at the proffered limb like she can’t figure out what to do. “Hi,” Derek says, looking pointedly down at his hand.

Kira blushes a _glorious_ red, a colour that could give Stiles’ own very impressive flush a run for its money, and then embarrassedly takes Derek’s hand. “It’s really great to meet you,” she says.

Derek smiles. “You too.” He nods to the set up in front of them. “Shall we get this over with?”

**then.**

“Marry me,” Derek whispers.

Stiles’ only response is to turn over in his sleep.

**now.**

Stiles likes to sing in the shower, loud and surprisingly in-tune, using his shampoo bottle as a fake microphone. He’s good – _extremely_ good – but Derek knows that it will never become anything more than a hobby for Stiles. Not again.

Buried beneath their bed, pushed behind old high school yearbooks and covered in a thin layer of dust, are books from _before._ Before Derek, or B.D. as Stiles likes to call it. They don’t talk about the contents of the notebooks, about the song lyrics and melodies that are scrawled over their lined pages, too explicit, too full of hate to ever have been published even when Stiles would have considered it.

It’s a remnant of the past that is shut away now, pushed away for closure.

There is one song, though, that Derek has heard. It’s titled _A Silver Bullet._

That one’s not getting published either.

**then.**

Lydia Martin is a force of nature dressed in designer clothes and about fifty dollars’ worth of perfume. She strides onto Derek’s film set with all the authority of someone who belongs there, and stalks up to Derek, only managing to reach his eye-level through tactical use of sloped ground and high heels.

“I know Stiles is sleeping with you,” she tells Derek.

Derek feels his blood go cold.

Lydia Martin is many things – the lead singer of her own spectacularly popular band, Banshee, a certified mathematical genius, and currently, the girlfriend of one Stiles Stilinski, a couple that the media has dubbed _Martinski_ and called _hot_. Derek can’t see this conversation going anywhere that he’s going to like.

He opens his mouth to reply.

“Don’t say a word,” Lydia commands harshly, then falters. “Stiles and I, we’re not …” she rolls her lips together. “We’re not like _that._ We’re not in love.”

Derek raises his eyebrows.

Lydia laughs shakily. “He’s so hopelessly besotted with you, you realise?” she asks. “But he’s never going to do that.”

Derek feels lost. “Do what?”

“Commit to you,” she clarifies. “Be _with_ you like he’s with me. He won’t, Derek, unless you…” She trails off.

“Unless I..?” Derek prompts.

Lydia’s shoulder slump. “Ask him.”

**now.**

“Kira called the other day when you were out,” Stiles informs Derek, stirring the spaghetti as he does so.

Derek reaches around to kiss Stiles’ neck. “What did she want?” he asks.

“To go out for drinks together,” Stiles answers. “You’d tell me if you were fooling around with my best friend’s girl, right?”

It’s mostly teasing, but Derek hears the underlying insecurity in the question. “Of course,” he dismisses. “But you do remember that I’m—”

“Strictly dickly, yeah I know.”

Derek rolls his eyes. “You want me to set the table?”

**then.**

“Danny wants you to know that he’s going to murder you in your sleep, but he’s happy for you,” Derek paraphrases the wordy text on Stiles’ phone screen. “Oh and Scott says to call him when you feel up to it. And your dad’s proud of you.”

Stiles moans into the pillow his face is buried in. Pushing up, he looks at Derek. “That was the single most terrifying thing I’ve ever done,” he says.

Derek pats his back condescendingly. “It gets better.”

Stiles fixes Derek with a _look._ “How original of you.”

“What can I say?” Derek asks. “I like the classics.”

**now.**

_Here’s your daily reminder that I love you!_ the note reads. It’s tacked to the fridge, just above a post-it note telling him to buy more milk on his way back from set. Derek smiles to himself, takes the note down from the fridge, and scribbles on an addendum.

_Love you back._

**then.**

“I love you,” Derek says, more out of habit than anything else.

Stiles pulls himself closer to Derek. “Love you back,” he mumbles sleepily and Derek stills.

It’s the first of many.

**now.**

Allison wraps Stiles in a tight embrace and doesn’t let go for several long minutes. She’s dressed down, in yoga pants and a tank top, and her hair is damp. When she finally releases him, she grins.

“I can’t believe we’re working together again,” Allison says, linking their arms. “It’s been forever.”

It’s been longer, Stiles wants to say, because he’s changed so much since they were last on the same project, and the Stiles that Allison knows isn’t the same person he is today. He’s worked hard to make sure that isn’t the case.

“It feels like yesterday that I was kissing Scott on set,” Allison goes on, not noticing Stiles’ unusual quietness. “God, what was that show called again?”

“ _The Hot Girl,_ ” Stiles replies absentmindedly.

**then.**

Stiles and Scott start their film careers at the tender age of fourteen as the cherub-faced stars of Disney’s latest TV show, _The Hot Girl._ For two seasons, they play the parts of Zane and Jack, two best friends with a bromance to end all other bromances. Stiles gets to work with his best friend, and he gets to sing on the show, and for a while, things are great.

Really great, in all honesty.

Then, _The Hot Girl_ is cancelled, and Stiles is drafted into Disney’s singing track, and Scott leaves to chase his dreams of being treated like a serious actor. Stiles is happy for him when he lands the part on _The Bite,_ and disappointed in him when he discovers that Scott is really playing the part of pawn in a game of intra-network politics.

They don’t talk as much anymore, and see each other even more rarely.

Then, Stiles’ mom dies and he’s never felt more alone.

**now.**

“I can’t believe you punched Derek in the face the first time you met,” Lydia says, shaking her head. She’s lounging over Stiles’ sofa, her feet propped up on his coffee table and inspecting her nails.

“ _I_ can’t believe that you announced that live on TV,” Danny mutters, not looking up from his phone. “You don’t pay me enough for this shit, Stilinski.”

Derek rolls his eyes. “You get paid plenty enough to put up with his shit,” he says. “I do it for free.”

Stiles elbows Derek sharply. “Watch it,” he says. “That sort of attitude will get me withholding sex.”

Derek just raises his eyebrows. The _asshole._

**then.**

Derek nurses his beer, glad for the anonymity that the darkened lighting of the club grants him. It’s been a while since he’s found the time to do this, to hide in a sea of faces and just blend in for once.

Someone taps him on the shoulder.

Derek turns around and the next thing he knows, there’s a fist smashing into his nose.

**now.**

“Marry me,” Derek whispers.

Stiles kisses him. “Yes.”


End file.
